Artistic Footprint

How to live without money.

The funny thing is, that in this world, you can’t. We have created a culture where you no longer live by natural selection but by financial succession. People can work in an economic sandbox toying with innessential trades of passive income to survive in a material world.

Does the evolution of money, inflation, taxes, and trade exemplify the root human instinct? The harder you work and the more optimistically creative your mind, the more successful you are. Sounds like natural selection to me… The prospect of inflation and taxes seems to be parallel with the concept of community, and trade the exchange of information and invention.

But in some ways, money personifies humans in a way that is far too systematic, calcuated, graphed out way that is scary and over simplified, creating an easily markettable norm of categories that are inherently inhuman. Categories that are concerned with survival in a material world as opposed to a realistic, resolved method of living that allows resources to sustain a worldly community.

We know already that the supply of resources in the human food-chain is obviously top-heavy, and has created an infatuation of gluttony within the poorer communities. The cliche of white western citizens with an obvious “head start” is being naturally assimilated by the masses of those who seek opportunity where we once took it for granted. Do they have the sense to correct our mistakes and learn that we weren’t capable of doing it right? Do they notice that our lavishing lives of comfort and adventure they so eagerly want are horridly greedy and unnattainable for eternity?

I’m trying to invent, in my brain, a method of community, trade, and progression without the concept of corruption, instability, and innaccountability of the economy. Community has been tarnished by digital ostracization and an ease of personal access, trade has been misinterpretted by false advertising, manipulation, and corner-cutting, all through the veneer of a neverending supply as if we have created our own heaven at the expense of our own hell.

Locally, I want to live in world of paying it forward. Where one good deed begets another for the benefit of a tightly nitted group. Specifically close friends and family, because it appears as though that is the limits of a structurally sound community. Its difficult for me to be comfortable around friends that are more financially successful and willing to cover for me in desperate times with no perspective of retribution, but I have to step back and understand that my relationship with them is not based on a tab, statement, or chequebook. We keep a mental tally in our heads that is expressed amongst ourselves that determines who owes who, and has nothing to do with a trade system, but the necessity to keep the well-oiled machine of a community running on track. I believe it is important to understand that people shouldn’t meet halfway by balancing an account, but that a certain placement, possibly of no cost at all, can be equal in value and maintain a strong relationship.

So lets rebuild the concept of community and understand that money cannot govern our emotions, desires, friendships, or sustainability. Instead, realise that the appreciation of smaller, well-suited friends and family have the power to continue the world within, and alter the world without. Think twice about who you really are your friends, and develop your own true community that touches your life directly every day. This malleable bubble of teamwork changes with your values as well as theirs, but somehow you will always find like-minded people who will accept you and your beliefs into a system that preserves them.

Something about the way the “free first world” is turning strikes the thought in me that… perhaps humans were not meant to live in such a large community. This coming from a Great White Northerner with a sparse population of 30 million. But regardless I find that taking a large amount of people, all who have different needs, ideas, and beliefs, and categorizing them as one entity with a common governing body just doesn’t quite cut it.

From what I see of city life on a daily basis is that people have some sort of constant confusion, lack of awareness, an automaticity in their stride, and bewilderment of the crowds among them.

People ride together on busses, all heading to the same direction, but they can’t stand the confrontation of another person trying to make room to sit down. This idea of a personal space or private bubble, sewn together in designer clothes, senses cut off with headphones, eyes dazing the busy streets to avoid contact with another pair.

We no longer know our neighbours by name and spend statistically 25% of our time glued to a flickering screen that sells useless products and services through fear.

Social Networking has been redefined from the baseball field to a digital game, obscuring our identities with our photoshopped lives, not just our makeup and vanity. Friends and family are always far enough away that the best way to communicate is, again, through electronic means, hidden behind a backspace key.

As a crowd, humans are not an intelligent species. We’re more like a flock of birds or a school of fish. We mimick each other or our idols, develop styles that help people judge us by our cover, and shy away from an opportunity to make a decision for ourselves. I think this is very scary for our little brains up there in this big world. It’s a lot to take in and most minds can’t grasp the big picture, and would much rather conform to the simple, easier ways about things. But that’s really dangerous! thats where the weak, ignorant, and malleable neurons follow what the big man on the TV tells us.

I think that humans inherently were designed to live in smaller communities, and we’re having problems evolving our brains to be compatible with the expansion of the metropolitan. In towns and villages, the people are much more calm, they take their time, enjoy a life with no traffic or crowding. They rely on eachother for help to keep the community intact. A small community can still fit the definition of a team, whereas a city relies on paperback systems and automated programs.